Hey folks! We're working on a dictionary of deniers' fallacies right now. This is a game for all the family - anyone can play, just contribute to the following categories below with your favourite example of 'revisionist' logic.

Below are 86 typical revisionist argumentative fallacies... can you get it up to 101?

The list is inspired by our revisionist chums as well as classic lists incl. Shermer's 'How Thinking Goes Wrong'.

Logical fallacy input especially welcome!

These are being fleshed out in the coming months and all input will be credited, incl. moonbat attacks.

"I've encountered many an online revisionist who will say things like 'I have no interest in demographics, I'm only interested in the gas chambers'. This is the same as a military historian saying 'I am not interested in battles, I am only interested in tanks'. People who are only interested in tanks are monomaniacal bores. The same has to be said for revisionists who are only interested in gas chambers."

Cf:
"A person who always says the same thing, and says it over and over again is, of course, commonly considered to be, if not a monomaniac, then at very least, a bore."
(10 characteristics....)

4. False Stipulation
'nobody denies' that some Jews died of starvation, etc,

6. Shhh.... it's a Secret!
Why are there no documents, the Germans were very organized - then when a document is found, oh sure, it it was so secret, why would they write it down or keep the evidence?.

Eyewitness Testimony

1. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibusapplied elsewhere, but most of all applied to witness tesimonies

2. Torture Fallacy
Hoess got beaten up, therefore all 10,000+ defendants in all war crimes trials from 1943 to the present day were all coerced.

3. ‘If you can’t discredit the evidence, you can always abuse the witness’ – Barrington James, CODOH forum, in his sig (!!!)

6. Ignorance of ‘two source rule’
(look at crazy survivor witness in newspaper! Speciality of CODOH forum, Lurkerthe etc. Never mind that no sane person believes anything until it is corroborated...)

7. Ignorance of exact extent of witness testimony
'Schwarzhuber? Who he? You mean Mussfeldt gave a testimony in 1945 as well as 1947? Well I never!'

8. How Eyewitness Testimony Interacts With Other Evidence
E.g., if witnesses testify to gassings at Kremas II-V, and Poles find HCN traces, then it is more logical to accept the witness testimony corroborated by 'neutral' forensic evidence, than to assume that all witnesses are lying and HCN traces derive from fumigations for which there is neither documentary nor eyewitness evidence.

Denier Cliches

1. Auschwitz plaque

2. Nuremberg Fallacy, i.e. ignorance of any other trial but IMT.

3. How _did_ Anne Frank die again?
and let's not forget who died with her...

4. Holes!

5. A reconstruction is not a fake
Krema I miscomprehensions

Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda (Deniers Know Best)or, how to commit the perfect genocide according to revisionist logic:

1. Why not just execute the French Jews in France (fill in geographic area), why transport them all the way across Europe?

2. Why not execute them with (fill in method) - seen everything from Sarin gas to drowning whole train loads in giant war tanks. (Use giant crane to drop rail car in lake, has added benefit of cleaning out rail car at the same time).

5. Everyone Else Had Them Too
conveniently forgetting that no Japanese-American was executed by the US government, nor did even Stalin's much larger GULag system rack up as many deaths in the same space of time

Time, Space and Organisation

1. Chronological Fallacy
1945 is not the same as 1942.
What transpired upon liberation does not logically say anything about what happened in 1942-3

2. Geographical Fallacy
Russia is not the same as Holland

3. Totalitarian Fallacy
One part of the Nazi regime is not automatically identical with another.

4. Secrecy Fallacy
More than one person cannot keep a secret.
Nonetheless, the secret will not be known by all.

Chemistry trumps history, they say, except it doesn't, because only through history can one determine how many gassings there were at Krema I, which then determines whether chemistry-set arguments are right or not.

3. Telepathy
even if witnesses testify to the same thing at the same time 500 miles apart, it's still a conspiracy..

4. The Commies Did It!
Except they went on to drive the remaining Jews out of Poland, repress Soviet Jews and arm Arab states in an attempt to give anti-Zionist rhetoric some muscle from ca. 1956-1973.

5. The Brits did it!
Except the British were wracking their brains over the Palestine question through to 1948.

6. The Yanks did it!
Except that there were fewer Jews in positions of power and influence in the '40s than there are today.

7. The Jews did it!
Q.E.D.

8. The Poles did it!
Rarely mentioned, but if anyone was in a position to elaborate the conspiracy, it was the Polish government-in-exile. How did they coordinate with the Lublin Poles, the Brits, the Yanks, the Soviets and the Jews? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Lack of Credible Alternative Explanation

1. Fallacy of Negation
(attack existing explanation, provide no new satisfactory one of their own).

5. Anti-German Propaganda
failure to understand impact of Ponsonby and 'German atrocities' story in 1914. Silent omission of paper trail of Allied incomprehension of what was happening.

6. Crying Wolf
(Jews claimed six million dead in 1920)
But no mention of crying wolf in 1881, 1905, 1933, 1938….

7. Compensation Fallacies
The money goes to survivors of NS internment. It mostly goes to non-Jews.

8. Aid to Israel Fallacies
Somehow, the fact that Egypt gets tons of money too is always overlooked. Somehow, the fact that Israel gets less civil aid than several African states is quietly not mentioned. Somehow, the fact that such aid did not even kick in till well past 1967 is definitely not mentioned...

Argumentia Ad Hominem

1. Heresy does not equal Correctness
(Zundel is not Galileo)

2. Ad Hominem Hypocrisies
wherein deniers whine about being called antisemitic Nazi moonbats but then speak of the ‘Zionist’ Hilberg, the Yehudi van Pelt etc

Hey folks! We're working on a dictionary of deniers' fallacies right now

David comments dryly- Given up intelligent discussion of the matter at hand? I had hoped you would expand on your claim that "accurate descriptions of Chelmno had reached London by May 1942." This relates to your, "Silent omission of paper trail of Allied incomprehension of what was happening. " (not to bother you with glaring contradictions in your claims)

Anyway, Nickterry posts

3. Obsession with gas chambers/Disinterest in Anything Else

Of course, that is why we are Revisionists....we are changing part of
the history, not the entire story.
Simply put, you guys believe in gas chambers: Revisionists don't.

To put your attack in an even better light, I am interested in only
2 gas chambers, Krema II and III at Birkenau. You seem to have
abandoned any interest in these two Leichenkeller but most Belief
has these morgues as the epicenter of the Ugly Myth.
I am "obsessed" with these two rooms because they are a useful
subject for scientific study. The physical remains exist, along with
mountains of documents, photographs, and other evidence....all
grist for honest Skeptical analysis.

As you admit, the Soviets created lots of Black Propaganda.
so did the British....The only claim that Revisionists make is that
some of this Black Propaganda still contaminates real history.
Not much of a conspiracy theory.

You, on the otherhand, are full of allegations of conspiracies.
When I pointed out to you that Austrian Jews were not sent
to any "Death Factory" like Auschwitz but to Minsk or Riga
YOU came up with the conspiracy based "explanation" that
Riga really was a secret code for Maly Trostenets...which was a
secret "extermination camp" ... but prior to a plan for extermination.

Then you come-up with a conspiracy that the Germans even wrote
to each other in "secret code"....even on construction documents.

To give you an example and tie this post in with my prior comments
regarding "gas chambers"....the Germans called the two rooms
(one each at Krema II and III) Birkenau..."Leichenkeller".
Care to explain your conspiracy theory that "Leichenkeller"
REALLY means something different than "Morgue"?

That means, complaining that "Believers"´ arguments stink, and either not realizing or intentionally ignoring that actually the smell was caused by them defecating on the methods of historical science.

That means, complaining that "Believers"´ arguments stink, and either not realizing or intentionally ignoring that actually the smell was caused by them defecating on the methods of historical science.

Is this like your dual arguments that
1. there was a clear paper trail that the British did NOT know of millions of (alleged) murders and
2. that they had clear description of Chelmno by May 1942?

Or like your dual arguments that
1. You knew that claims of 1,500,000 or 360,000 or even 200,000 Polish
victims of Majdanek were absurdly high
2. But you still Believe in Majdanek "gas chambers"?

Or your theory Hoess really meant 1942 when he
testified to being told in 1941 to make Auschwitz into a Death Factory
for European Jews.

Or your theory that the German policy of emigration was changed
by a telephone call by Mueller?

To bring it back to your list of "Fallacies"...you claim we Revisionists
are obsessed with "gas chambers". Maybe so, but there are logical
Skeptical reasons for it...none of which you address.

Your new theory is that gas chambers were NOT important but
mass killings in unknown locations in the "East" were.
The Movement of Holocaust Belief from Auschwitz, Dachau, Majdanek
to points less known and further and further East was predicted
by Historian David McCalden years ago.

Now you come up with a theory that trains going to Riga REALLY
went to Maly Trostenets and Maly Trostnets REALLY was a
vast Extermination Center....and then you crow out that nobody can
argue with you.

Is this like your dual arguments that 1. there was a clear paper trail that the British did NOT know of millions of (alleged) murders and 2. that they had clear description of Chelmno by May 1942?

Or like your dual arguments that 1. You knew that claims of 1,500,000 or 360,000 or even 200,000 Polish victims of Majdanek were absurdly high2. But you still Believe in Majdanek "gas chambers"?

Or your theory Hoess really meant 1942 when hetestified to being told in 1941 to make Auschwitz into a Death Factoryfor European Jews.

Or your theory that the German policy of emigration was changedby a telephone call by Mueller?

To bring it back to your list of "Fallacies"...you claim we Revisionistsare obsessed with "gas chambers". Maybe so, but there are logicalSkeptical reasons for it...none of which you address.

Your new theory is that gas chambers were NOT important butmass killings in unknown locations in the "East" were. The Movement of Holocaust Belief from Auschwitz, Dachau, Majdanekto points less known and further and further East was predictedby Historian David McCalden years ago.

Now you come up with a theory that trains going to Riga REALLYwent to Maly Trostenets and Maly Trostnets REALLY was avast Extermination Center....and then you crow out that nobody canargue with you.

Doctor X wrote:Yes, and to be serious, fallacies often "blend" in that more than one may be involved. To use your example, one can commit the cadit quaetio ["The question fails."--Ed.] fallacy. They ask a leading question that implies facts without evidence as Lecturer Gonad feebly attempted. The classic example is: have you stopped beating your wife?

However, such a question also "poisons" the well of the audience--"what? He beats his wife? He has an ideology? Let's not listen to him, Ethel!" Naturally, an argumentum ad hominem can rather Poison the Well.

Pettifogery is one you have seen and dispensed with--someone concentrates on a triffle point in order to distract from the entire argument. So, screeching that "8 million!" is a lie because it was really 7,894,239 is such a fallacy--it misses the obvious point that a whole lot of people were murdered. It also ignores all of the other evidence.

--J.D.

Pettifoggery is sometimes a characteristic of deniers.

More common is the statistical hocus-pocery to reanimate dead Jews out of a smaller number of survivors, usually striving for sleight of hand - look! see! Slovaks! but forgetting Greeks, Romanians etc.

OOAS attempted a variant of this by focusing excessively on Austrian Jews, in an attempt to confuse the wood for the trees. Taken to its most extreme it would be reductio ad absurdum but there must surely be a middle term before one arrives at the truly preposterous.

The other classic is variations on the argumentum ad veritatem obfuscandam, where the fallacious throws out multiple irrelevant arguements in order to confuse another. I allow the inclusion of what would be a "strawman" in that one throws out an irrelevant argument as if it is yours and then attacks it in order to confuse.

Yes. This is the baseline norm within denial. There is a whole host of 'examples' and 'stories' that appear only within revisionist literature, to the point where one is increasingly unsure if they have not, in fact, been invented or forged (as with the infamous 'Lachout document') outright.

Usually one encounters the following attempt to snow the reader with {!#%@}:

- 'geysers of blood', mentioned thirdhand by Elie Wiesel, with two direct eyewitness accounts only, relating to Babi Yar. Instead of concluding that eyewitness was mistaken on the detail, which would be the instinctive reaction they conclude nothing happened at all because of exaggeration, thereby triggering falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.

In fact, the phenomenon of mass graves of animal carcasses yielding body fluids and blood which bubbles to the surface was observed in the aftermath of the foot-and-mouth epidemic in the UK in 2001, one of the few empirically comparable situations where large amounts of animal flesh have been interred.

Therefore, one can conclude that though the witnesses exaggerated as to the choice of noun, they most probably did observe blood bubbling up as if from Yellowstone National Park springs.

One could apply the same revisionist logic to the battle of Shiloh, focusing on the tales that there was so much blood that the river ran red, contend that this is nonsense because the river was too broad or the battle too far away, and thereby conclude that the battle of Shiloh (which killed people into five figures, just like Babi Yar) did not take place. All veterans of the battle must clearly be liars, or coerced by mutually reinforcing Union and Confederate propaganda, all part of the gigantic Civil War Hoax that has accursed the South for nearly 150 years in a desperate Northern attempt to extract tax payments from the Sunbelt. How'm I doing?

More common is the statistical hocus-pocery to reanimate dead Jews out of a smaller number of survivors, usually striving for sleight of hand - look! see! Slovaks! but forgetting Greeks, Romanians etc.

OOAS attempted a variant of this by focusing excessively on Austrian Jews, in an attempt to confuse the wood for the trees. Taken to its most extreme it would be reductio ad absurdum but there must surely be a middle term before one arrives at the truly preposterous.

David laughs- How about a Believer Fallacy of avoiding specifics?

The cases of Denmark, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Austria and Germany
itself all show deportation of Jewish Nationals in the so-called
"Extermination Period" from between 0 to 15%. It is a large
sampling and well documented.
The reason for looking at the various specifics is not to arrive
at an "average figure" but to learn about National Socialist policy and
why it evolved. As I have correctly pointed out, National Socialist
policies varied widely from country to country and time to time.

How about the Believer Fallacy of "Maximizing Deaths"?

Believers try to maximize the number of Jews allegedly under
German control. Pre-War population figures are used for
German occupied Poland with no recognition that huge percentages
of Jews emigrated West or fled East. However, Polish Jews deported
from France are double counted both as murdered Polish Jews and
Jews deported from France.

How about the old "I Never Believed THAT" Gambit?
When one understand the evolution of the Ugly Myth this gambit
becomes humorous. Originally Soviet and British propaganda protrayed
the National Socialists as bent on conquering the world and killing
all non-Germans right from the beginning. The Soviets claimed that Majdanek was a huge extermination factory for Poles and Russians. Auschwitz was to kill "all the Jews of European" starting in 1941.
The original Ugly Myth "proved" just that...4,000,000 for Auschwitz
and 1,500,000 for Majdanek. Both these figures rapidly slipped
from the official figures of 1947. While more slippage is foreseen,
presently Believers have admitted a 75% REDUCTION for
Auschwitz and an amazing 95% REDUCTION for Majdanek.

But today's Believers like to pretend that they really knew the "real"
figures all along. Nickterry even claims to have known that the
official Majdanek figures were "way too high"....but for some reason
Nickterry had no interest in making a major historic breakthrough.

Doctor X wrote:That is the basic approach. One can apply this to all sorts of situations. When the Hitler Youth first showed up I posted a link to a "Potato Famine" denial page. Others have found "slavery denial" pages. Heck, Moonbats are trying to do it with 9/11. Simply ignore the positive evidence and try to find anything, no matter how tenous, that can serve as negative evidence.--J.D.

oh, I think the Mad Revisionist has shown how to apply denier methodology to just about any situation possible.

The question is whether the analogies break down. Looks like it's off to re-read that notorious Believer Bible, Macpherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, and do some Googling to find out how many of your tax dollars are being spent illegitimately on your behalf propping up the 'sinking ship Shiloh'. The end of the hoax is nigh!

you are standing waist-deep in a self-produced cesspool of lies, misrepresentation and anti-semitic propaganda.

Nickterry posts-

. Obsession with gas chambers/Disinterest in Anything Else

David continues calmly and rationally-
Believers in the Ugly Myth fail to recognize that their beliefs have
changed since created by Soviet and British propagandists at the end of the War....as more and more real information is brought into light
by Revisionists.

At this point it is useful to look at the contending Schools of Belief,
Intentionalists and Functionalists.

Basically, the Ugly Myth was that the National Socialists
wanted to take over the World and kill everybody who was not
blond and blue-eyed and German. This allged plan was a basic part of
National Socialist ideology from the beginnings in 1919.
This is the Intentionalist theory. This was what was "proven" at the
Nuremberg Trials.
-quote-
At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials of 1945-1946, the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe" was represented by the prosecution as part of long-term plan on the part of the Nazi leadership going back to the foundations of the Nazi Party in 1919. Subsequently, most historians subscribed to what would be today considered to be the extreme Intentionalist interpretation. -end-*

It is the conflict between the Black Propaganda of the Ugly Myth and
reality which has created the two Believer Schools. Looked at
from the outside...Intentionalists are extreme followers
of the Ugly Myth while Functionalists are closer to reality.

As any Skeptic knows....reality will win in a fair contest and, sure
enough, it is only a few diehards like Lucy Dawidowicz who argue that the Holocaust was planned by Hitler from the very beginning of his political career, at very least from 1919 on, if not earlier. Dawidowicz dates the decision for genocide to November 11, 1918.

Bringing this back to Chaos' smears and Nickterry's diversions-

The Gas Chambers were the major part of the Intentionalists brief....
and the Ugly Myth of vast Factories of Death....proof of a vast Plan
of organized murder.

Yet modern Believers are more and more "Functionalist" forgetting the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Majdanek, Dachau and "going East",
blaming rogue actions in Russia from mid-1941 on.

It is ironic that Nickterry actually uses Revisionist focus on "gas chambers" as something to mock people for but Nickterry and his ilk have retreated East...the "Holocaust" is more like a Haditha massacre 100,000 times.

I am sure that Nickterry will rush back to declare his faith in the
basic tenets of of the Ugly Myth...without even understanding what he
is following.

Chaos seems unaware that an analysis of the fate/emigration of Austrian Jews is merely an extension of the Functionalist-Intentionalist debate to an actual example. If the National Socialists forced 80% of Austrian
Jews to emigrate by 1942 it seems hard to claim that the real policy was to
kill them.

*[Today's Believers "overlook" is that the Ugly Myth was that Slavs, Gypsies, Poles, etc. were all supposed to be "Exterminated" as part of
a vast Plan, but that is a different Believer Fallacy.]

They laughed at Copernicus. They laughed at the Wright brothers. Yes, well, they laughed at the Marx brothers. Being laughed at does not mean you are right. Wilhelm Reich compared himself to Peer Gynt, the unconventional genius out of step with society, and misunderstood and ridiculed as a heretic until proven right: "Whatever you have done to me or will do to me in the future, whether you glorify me as a genius or put me in a mental institution, whether you adore me as your savior or hang me as a spy, sooner or later necessity will force you to comprehend that I have discovered the laws of the living" (in Gardner 1952, p. 259). Reprinted in the January-February 1996 issue of the Journal of Historical Review, the organ of Holocaust denial, is a famous quote from the nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, which is quoted often by those on the margins: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident." But "all truth" does not pass through these stages. Lots of true ideas are accepted without ridicule or opposition, violent or otherwise. Einstein's theory of relativity was largely ignored until 1919, when experimental evidence proved him right. He was not ridiculed, and no one violently opposed his ideas. The Schopenhauer quote is just a rationalization, a fancy way for those who are ridiculed or violently opposed to say, "See, I must be right." Not so.

History is replete with tales of the lone scientist working in spite of his peers and flying in the face of the doctrines of his or her own field of study. Most of them turned out to be wrong and we do not remember their names. For every Galileo shown the instruments of torture for advocating a scientific truth, there are a thousand (or ten thousand) unknowns whose "truths" never pass muster with other scientists. The scientific community cannot be expected to test every fantastic claim that comes along, especially when so many are logically inconsistent. If you want to do science, you have to learn to play the game of science. This involves getting to know the scientists in your field, exchanging data and ideas with colleagues informally, and formally presenting results in conference papers, peer-reviewed journals, books, and the like.

Your gurus are being locked up for spouting antisemitic racist crap in violation of the laws of certain European countries with dubious pasts to contend with.